All I can say is, wow, the vegetable garden is absolutely exploding this week.

Lots of harvesting going on in almost every category, including a few of the early tomato varieties. I'll tell you what kind of gardening year it's been this year by the following example. When I was thinning out the zucchini plants back in late May, I chucked the extra plants I dug up on top of the compost pile. I have no idea how they survived with the roots not planted in the soil and exposed to the air, but here it was, a magnificent zucchini plant out of nowhere growing in the compost pile loaded with blossoms and young zucchini. Amazing.

String beans, one of my favorite crops, barely make it to the kitchen without being eaten raw in the garden. The eggplant is going to be a bumper crop, as are the peppers. Plenty of sunshine and nice warm days are prodding these plants along.

There's plenty of herbs to use in the kitchen now and even start drying for use during winter.

I adore echinacea (purple coneflower), and this year they are tall and statuesque, but I did receive a question from a reader regarding the slow growth and lack of flowers this year on hydrangeas. Those of you that have them in your yard, I am betting that you had to cut down a lot of dead wood this year and that you are not experiencing the kind of flower production you've experienced in previous years. The reason is that we had a bit of a freeze earlier in the year as the hydrangeas had started to put out leaf growth, and this set them back considerably. Hence, much of the growth had to come from the base of the plant and that takes a lot of extra time in order to set buds and flowers. That's why you're not seeing great production from these beautiful plants. Give them an extra boost of assistance with at least a gallon of liquid fertilizer (I like to use the kind of fertilizer designated for roses). This is a perfect time to drench them with this mixture and speed up the flower production.

Speaking of liquid fertilizer, keep those hanging baskets and flower pots well fed with a feeding at least once a week. You'll be amazed at the extra flower production and how healthy and dark green the foilage will be. Watch the watering, especially as we head into August. Soil can dry out very fast, especially if you plant in raised beds, as there is more exposure to drying winds and sunshine.

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Picture insert - "Intensive gardening" techniques as show in this picture of my garden demonstrate that several crops (peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers) can be planted closely together and not only grow, but thrive and produce bumper crops

Organic thoughts

I have been writing "In The Garden" articles since 1992, and as I look back on those from some 20 years ago, it was evident that I used and promoted a good deal of chemical insecticide, disease control and chemical fertilizer products. If it weren't for chemical insecticides, herbicides and fertilizers, we wouldn't be able to sustain the volume of food the world's population requires to survive.

From time to time, I still go to the shed and use one of these products, especially on non-food crops. However, over the last several years I have softened my position on non-organic products used on the landscape, and especially on food crops.

Organic methods are bountiful, whether it's in terms of insect and disease control or soil improvement methods. But using organic insecticides is not 100 percent reliable, nor are some of the organic products 100 percent safe for use on food crops (be sure to read the product labels and directions).

What I am becoming very adamant about is avoiding anything that is placed in the soil or can leech into the soil that's non-organic. What many fail to realize is that your health ultimately depends on the health of the soil where crops are grown. The soil is what allows vegetables and fruits to grow nutrient dense. When soil becomes depleted of nutrients, well, it makes sense that the food we will end up eating will be deficient in critical minerals and phytonutrients.

The answer is clearly not adding more and more chemical fertilizer (though I still use them to some extent), but it is that magical ingredient called compost that maintains and maximizes soil health -- the microorganisms living in the soil. This includes bacteria, fungi, protozoa and microscopic roundworms called nematodes. Sounds gross? No, not at all.

These microorganisms are an essential requirement for optimized plant growth, and it's understood that there is a relationship between these microorganisms, the soil's "biome," and the plants' roots, called rhizosphere, that is responsible for allowing crops to absorb nutrients from the soil. It makes sense that if the soil is rich in nutrients, and rich in those nutrients that are naturally found in a material like compost, then the food we eat will contain high levels of beneficial nutrients that will be used in our bodies and for our health.

What's that, you don't have a compost pile in your yard?

The good news is that it is never too late to start one, even in the dead of winter when things will decompose, but more slowly. If you have limited space, there are many commercially available compost bins and even above-ground composters that spin to help aerate and properly decompose waste plant matter.

For those with adequate space, a simple system of three piles works best. In the first pile, place fresh plant material and kitchen scraps to start making compost. As that pile begins decomposing, move it to a second pile where secondary composting takes place, then move it to a third pile, where it will finish decaying and finally be screened into usable compost to be mixed into the garden's soil.

Details on building a compost pile will be coming up in future articles.